One Geek to Craft Them All

Yesterday I roasted a duck. While I enjoy duck, and have made some pre-prepared confit I have never really cooked duck. I also haven’t had a kitchen experiment in some time and I realized I was missing a cooking challenge. I may put together a dinner party soon.

I’m lucky to live near Prospect Park and they have a green market on weekend mornings. After jogging with a friend (all I have to say about that is Ow!) we wandered the market and I tried to figure out what to cook. I left with, a duck, collard greens (never made these either), fingerling potatoes, rosemary and onions.

As I like to pretend I don’t have an entire shelf of cookbooks, just outside the kitchen I found a recipe online for Roasting a perfectly crispy duck , I pretty much followed the recipe, though I did not make the glaze and I stuffed the duck with an  onion cut into quarters, and some fresh rosemary. I also rubbed it down with a rub, made of, kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.  It worked out pretty much perfectly.

I chopped some fingerling potatoes, covered, them in salt, rosemary, garlic, butter, and duck fat and threw them in the oven. Also great. Then I gathered the collards, read all the recipes for searing them and managed to make up my own without noticing. Washed and chopped the collards,  chopped one small onion, which I threw into a wok with some duck fat, garlic, salt, and pepper.  threw in the collard till they were bright green then, put them in a bowl and tossed them with some lemon juice. Not the way I usually eat them at multiple BBQ locations but good.

The duck was a hit, and some friends came over with a maple walnut Kahlua cake, why I let them leave with the remains of said cake I do not know. I let them take the cake away…sigh.  Now I’m off to have lunch because, lunch is leftovers, even if there is no cake.

They also brought a very fitting movie for a duck filled adventure.

Life is like a hurricane
Here in Duckburg
Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes,
It’s a duck- blur
Might solve a mystery
Or rewrite history

And if  that wasn’t enough of an ear worm for you, here have a sing along 

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Cooking duck, roasting

How was everyone’s long weekend? Did you all have fun? Mine turned out to be a bit longer than originally planned as on Sunday I was brilliant enough to fall out of the shower. Luckily my head missed the toilet and I was just in a lot of pain and embarrassed. I spent the rest of the day doing the zombie shuffle to get around, and waited for very colorful bruises to come up.

On Monday there was less shuffling and a slow trot around and about three hours of work to make cupcakes. Now these were good cup cakes but they should not have taken three hours to put together.

Yes those are s’mores cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes  with a graham cracker crust and marshmallow fluff icing, into which I shoved,  graham crackers and small bits of hershey’s bars into, because really why not?  They are delicious. I used a modified version of  this recipe  most of my mods were to the cake, and I ended up making 30 not 24 cupcakes.

So back to the falling? Well by around 4 Monday after spending  hours lying on a yoga mat, with an ice pack, I figured going to work was out of the cards, and I actually went to the doctor, some X-rays to be sure, and some prodding later and it’s most likely deep tissue bruising and I should be fine in a week. If not I have a referral to another doctor. That took most of Tuesday to get done, and Sunday and Monday were spent lying in various locations in pain, so I’m behind on some things, as I pretty much could look at things on my phone or ipad.

Laptops, knitting, moving around too much were all out of the question, as was putting on anything more complicated than a dress. That and a preemptive dose of Alleve and hopefully the bus ride won’t be agony.

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Cooking back, cupcakes

So on Wednesday I mentioned that this weekend I would be hosting a thanksgiving potluck hybrid.  Friday night I started with prep.

I brined the turkey and the Turkey breast using this recipe which included sage, thyme and rosemary which were all in the  herb butter rub recipe that i was using for the turkey. I filled it full of ice and put it in the fridge for the night.

The odd pepper shaker was just to keep the bag in place. I found brining bags but they were for 23lb birds. So when shifted around the brine covered the bird with help. Enter empty pepper tin.

I also wasn’t really stuffing the bird just adding some veggies to both parts. Carrots celery and onions.

So come Saturday Afternoon  I pull out the turkeys and rinse them out and spread the herb butter over them.

Which was very difficult due to the fact the butter was warmer than the turkey at this point and, it hardened instead of spreading. With some very messy uses of my fingers, I made some magic happen. Or tried. Then into the oven with the bird.

The whole turkey went into the oven a couple hours before the breast. Then the turkey came out of the oven.  I had to say it looked like a success. I’d have to taste it to be sure but wow, that was one pretty bird.

Don’t you just want to have turkey now?

The bird was done at about 5:30 just in time for the first guests to start arriving, those that needed to cook, and or heat things up.  Then the table was set.

Turkey and the many sides. And that little blue cup? Homemade butter!

There is not nearly as much food as one would think left. Just a bit of Turkey back, the breast I divided among the guests in exchange for things like an alcohol soaked chocolate cake.

Sure you can take half the breast. I suppose I just have to be left with all this cake. There was lots of wine drank, and lots of food eaten.  All in all it was a fun time.  And then on Sunday there was a lot of  geeky crafting, and leftover eating.

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Cooking thanksgiving

Only my second WIP Weds and I have something very different to talk about. This weekend I’m hosting a Thanksgiving in April (it should not be this hard to find a Turkey in NYC- I actually bought it in NJ!), that turned into a bit of a pot luck.

So For the first time I’m going to brine, and roast a turkey. I’ve done chicken and Cornish hens, but I have never made brined anything.  But my goal is to make the turkey, and stuffing (separately) and end up with something like this.

I should be able to do it… And all the friends are bringing sides, and dessert, and other fixings.  I mean really what are the chances I end up with something like this?

There’s always pizza if that is the case and I can ply the masses with wine. They won’t notice then right? Right?  So between prepping for this and work eating me, there has been little knitting, I cast on the Oak grove in some blue Sweet Georgia yarn, and I’ll share that adventure in the next post. Small hands and long fingers can make for an odd effect.

Keep your fingers crossed for me and pray I am posting lovely photos of a meal gone very well on Monday.

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Cooking cooking, thanksgiving, WIPW